Dallas surprises New Cities Summit attendees — in ways good and bad

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Andy Jacobsohn/Staff Photographer

A view of the Bank of America Building during a bus tour with guests of the New Cities Summit through areas of Dallas Thursday June 19, 2014. Tour guides Lee McKinney and Heather Lepeska guided international, national and local guests through downtown Dallas, the Frazier and Cedars neighborhoods and the new Parkland Hospital.

Visitors in Dallas for the international New Cities Summit found a strange place that mirrored neither the Texas cliche of cattle and oil nor expectations of a bustling new metropolis.

Instead, many found an optimistic, spirited city but also one with empty sidewalks, impossibly wide roads, an unhealthy attachment to their cars and not enough vibrancy for a population of more than 1.2 million. Some also saw a place embracing sustainable development and trying to roll back decades of old-fashioned urban planning.

The conference — subtitled Re-Imagining Cities — brought together about 800 people from about 40 countries to discuss urban innovations. In many of those countries, big cities look nothing like Dallas.

Indra B. Sukirno, executive director and CEO of the Jakarta Convention & Exhibition Bureau, said her few earlier impressions of Dallas came from the TV show of the same name and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. She said that presented an unwelcoming, harsh image.

“It really changes my impressions,” she said about her short visit. “I like how the city is being transformed into something friendly, artistic, cultured. … I think that Dallas in the future can be one of the preferred destinations for international travelers.”

Paolo Segarini, an architecture student at the Polytechnic University of Milan, said he and two classmates scouted downtown Dallas and were baffled by it. Their hometown has about 100,000 more people than Dallas and occupies about the same amount of land as Plano.

“We walked around, and we asked ourselves, where’s the center, where’s the people, where’s the life?” he said. “We can’t understand how the city works.”

Coming from a densely developed, 2,000-year-old city, Segarini said Dallas’ car culture and lack of pedestrians and bicycles were concerns. But after a few sessions and conversation with locals, he said he appreciated the progress Dallas has made in changing its old development patterns.

“We feel a lot of energy,” he said. “I think people know that this is not the correct way you develop a city. But there is a lot of spirit, a lot of hope.”

Tour, warts and all

Some of sustainable development promoted at the conference has been championed by Dallas leadership recently. There have been attempts to make the city more bike-friendly, expand the trolley system and other transit options, and encourage denser, mixed-use development.

For many conference participants, there was little time to explore the city. Much of their knowledge came from seeing downtown, maybe a nearby neighborhood and the Arts District, where the conference was held.

A series of bus tours gave a couple of dozen people a better understanding of their host region. One tour, focused on Dallas and public-private partnerships, did not stick to highlights from tourism ads.

The tour motored past luxury condominiums and hotels in Uptown, neglected neighborhoods in South Dallas and Fair Park, historic buildings given new life, and groups of homeless seeking shelter and services.

They also saw signs of hope in a planned medical clinic in South Dallas and newly built townhomes for low-income residents.

The people on the tour walked through Main Street Gardens, a highlight of downtown’s new park system, and on the roof of the new $1.3 million Parkland Hospital.

Lasse Galvani Bruun, originally from Denmark and now working for Greenpeace in São Paulo, Brazil, said he once had the stereotypical old West image that many Europeans have of Texas. After meeting Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings at last year’s summit in São Paulo, Bruun said he became aware of the city’s new ambitions.

“It’s becoming a hub for culture, for music, and hopefully soon, more nightlife as well,” he said.

Like many international visitors, Bruun found the mass transit lacking and a need for more infrastructure to encourage pedestrians and cyclists.

With the wide roads, he said it wouldn’t be difficult to add bike lanes, which would make it safer for cyclists and less of a nuisance for drivers.

‘Some sort of soul’

Cristian Santibanez, a program associate for the New Cities Foundation in Paris, said some friends told him: “Oh, my God, you’re going to Texas? Poor you.”

But he said that was from people who had never been to Texas. Those who had been to Texas told him that it’s a “great place, people are super kind.”

“Dallas is really going through a transformation,” he said. “You’re at a point where in the story of the city, you can still infuse some sort of soul in it.”

Still, he also wonders why “no one is really questioning the car.”

“I know we’re in the middle of a workday, but I’ve seen basically no one on the streets,” Santibanez said. “I’m not used to seeing a city so empty.”

Matthew Glasser, lead urban specialist at the World Bank in Washington D.C., was visiting Dallas for the first time since 1961.

“What sort of surprised me is how un-street-oriented a lot of the buildings are,” he said, “these blank walls on the ground floor or lack of retail and commercial to engage you as you walk down the street.”

Glasser said the investment in light rail is heartening, though.

“What we do now will be a fact, will be laid down on the ground for centuries,” he said, paraphrasing a speaker at one of the presentations. “If you don’t get it right as it’s laid down, it’s hard and expensive to redo later.”

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